S A L M A G UN D I

A14TH

CENTURY

BLUE HERON

2

VOICESMichael BarrettIan HowellOwen McIntoshJason McStoots

Martin NearAaron SheehanSumner Thompson

Joel Gordon, engineering & masteringScott Metcalfe & Eric Milnes, producersEric Milnes & Joel Gordon, editingRecorded at the Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, in 2010 & 2014.

Tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 & 8 were commissioned for the CD accompanying Capturing Music: The Story of Notation by Thomas Forrest Kelly (W. W. Norton: New York & London, 2015). Used by permission from W. W. Norton.

Tracks 3 & 7 were commissioned for the Oxford Anthology of Western Music, ed. David J. Rothenberg & Robert R. Holzer (Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford, 2013). Used by permission from Oxford University Press.

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Blue HeronA 14TH-CENTURY SALMAGUNDI

1 Petrus de Cruce (fl. c. 1290)Aucun ont trouvé / Lonc tans me sui tenu / Annuntiantes JM MB ST 3:37

2 Attr. to Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361) Garrit gallus / In nova fert animus MN IH SM 2:40

3 Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377) En mon cuer a un descort AS SM 4:47

4 MachautBiauté qui toutes autres pere OM LJ SM 6:07(version with added contratenor, probably not by Machaut)

5 Jacob Senleches (fl. 1380s) En attendant, Esperance conforte OM CW SM 11:52

6 AnonymousIo son un pellegrin OM ST 3:05

7 Jacopo da Bologna (fl. 1340–?1386) Osellecto selvaggio AS ST 4:28

8 Francesco Landini (c. 1325–1397) Musica son / Già furon / Ciascun vuole OM JM ST 3:27

TOTAL TIME 40:04

SOURCES

1 Montpellier, Bibliothèque interuniversitaire, Section Médicine, MS. H 196, ff. 273-273v

2 Roman de Fauvel, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 146, f. 44v

3 Machaut MS Vg (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Parker Library, MS Ferrell 1), ff. 330v-331; also in MSS B, A, G & E

4 3-part version in Machaut MS E (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 9221), ff. 152v-153; 2-part in MSS C, Vg, B, A & G

5 Modena, Biblioteca Estense α.M.5.24, ff. 40v-41

6 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS ital. 568, f. 42v7. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Panciatichi 26 /

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, nouv. acq. fr. 6771 (Reina Codex) / Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Mediceo Palati-no 87 (Squarcialupi Codex) / etc.

8 Squarcialupi Codex, ff. 121v-122

Information about these manuscripts and links to digital images of many may be found in the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, www.diamm.ac.uk.

INSTRUMENTSLaura Jeppesen, fiddleCharles Weaver, luteScott Metcalfe, fiddle, harp

BLUE HERON Scott Metcalfe, artistic director

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TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS

1 Aucun ont trouvé / Lonc tans me sui tenu / Annun[tiantes]

Some have invented songs out of habit,but I am given incentive byLove, who so fills my heart with joythat I must make a song,for he makes me love a lady fair and wise and of good name.And I, who have swornto serve her all my lifewith a loyal heart, without thought of betrayal,will sing, for from her I receive so sweet a giftthat I have no joy save for one:this is the thought that soothes my sweet painand gives hope for a cure.Nevertheless, Love may claim supremacy over meand hold me in his prison all my life long,nor indeed shall I ever think ill of him for this.He knows how to attack so subtlythat no one can defend himself against him:neither bodily strength nor noble lineageis worth a button,and if it pleases him to grant ransomon his terms, I am taken and pledgemy heart, which I wholly abandon.Thus I pray for mercy, for I have no other resource,nor any other reason in my favor.

TRIPLUMAucun ont trouvé chant par usage,Mes a moi en doune ochoisonAmours, qui resbaudist mon courage,Si que m’estuet faire chançon,Car amer me fait dame bele et sageEt de bon renon.Et je, qui li ai fait houmagePour li servir tout mon aageDe loial cuer sans penser trahison,Chanterai, car de li tieng un si douz heritage,Que joie n’ai se de ce non:C’est la pensée, que mon douz mal m’asouage,Et fait esperer garison,Ne pour quant suer moi puet clamer hausageAmours et moi tout mon vivant tenir en sa prison.Ne ja pour ce ne penserai vers li mesprison;Tant set soutilment assallir,K’encontre li defendre ne s’en puet on.Force de cors ne plenté de lignageNe vaut un bouton,Et si li plaist de raençonRendre a son gré, sui pris et l’en fais gageMon cuer, que je met du tout en abandon.Si proi merci, car autre avantageN’ai je ne pour moi nule autre raison.

MOTETUSLonc tans me sui tenu de chanter,Mes or ai raison de joie mener,Car boune amour me fait désirerLa miex ensegnieK’on puist en tout le mont trouver;A li ne doit on nule autre comparer,Et quant j’aim dame si proisieQue grant deduit ai du penser,Je puis bien prouverQue mout a savoureuse vie,Quoi que nus die, En bien amer.

TENORAnnun[tiantes]

For a long time I refrained from singing,but now I have reason to be joyous,for true love makes me desirethe best bred lady whom one can find in the whole world:none other can be compared with her.And since I love so highly-prized a ladythat I get great pleasure from the thought.I can indeed prove that he who loves wellleads a most delicious life, whatever anyone may say.

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MOTETUSIn nova fert animus

mutatas dicere formas:draco nequam quem olim penitusmirabili crucis potencia debellabit Michael inclitus,mox Absalon munitus gracia,mox Ulixis gaudens facundia,mox lupinis dentibus armatus,sub Tersitis miles milicia,rursus vivit in vulpem mutatus,fraudi cuius lumine privatusleo vulpe imperante paret.Oves suggit pullis saciatus.Heu! suggere non cessat et aretad nupcias carnibus non caret.Ve pullis mox, ve ceco leoni!coram Christo tandem ve draconi.

My mind is bent to tell of forms changed into new things:

that evil dragon, whom glorious Michael once utterly defeated by the miraculous power of the cross,now armed thanks to Absalom,now gloating with the eloquence of Ulysses,now armed with the teeth of a wolf,a soldier in the army of Thersites—he lives again, changed into a fox.Deprived of sight by the fox’s tail,the lion, ruled by the fox, obeys.He sucks the blood of lambs, sated with chickens.Alas! he never stops sucking and thirstsfor a marriage, he does not lack for meat.Now woe to the chickens, woe to the blind lion!and finally, before Christ, woe to the dragon.

2 Garrit gallus / In nova fert animusTRIPLUMGarrit gallus flendo dolorose,luget quippe gallorum concio,que satrape traditur dolose,excubitus sedens officio.Atque vulpes, tamquam vispilioin Belial vigens astucia,de leonis consensu propriomonarchisat, atat angaria.Rursus, ecce, Jacob familiaPharaone altero fugatur;non ut olim Iude vestigiasubintrare potens, lacrimatur.In deserto fame flagellatur,adiutoris carens armatura,quamquam clamat, tamen spoliatur,continuo fordan moritura,miserorum exulum vox dura!O Gallorum garritus doloris,cum leonis cecitas obscurafraudi paret vulpis proditoriseius fastus sustinens errorisinsurgito: alias labituret labetur quod habes honoris,quod mox in facinus tardisultoribus itur.

The rooster cries, lamenting sadly,indeed the whole assembly of roosters laments,for they have been betrayed by the crafty satrapwho was supposed to guard them.And the fox, like a thief in the night,vigorous with the cunning of Belial,reigns with the full consentof the lion himself.Behold how the family of Jacobonce again flees another Pharaoh:no longer able to follow the path of the Jewsas before, it weeps.In the desert it is tortured by hunger,with no armor to help.though they cry out yet they are robbed;soon perhaps to die,harsh is the voice of the wretched exiles,O painful cries of the roosters!Since the dark blindness of the lionis subject to the deceit of the treacherous fox,supporting his arrogance by encouraging sin,rise up! otherwise what is left of your honor slips away and will continue to slip away.With only slow avengers it will soonturn to villainy.

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Et Desirs, san nul deport.Fait mon cuer par son effortTaindre et palir;Biaute me vient assaillir;Douceur m’endort.Mais Amours me fait au fortTaire et souffrir.

En mon cuer a un descort …

Las! einsi m’estuet languir.Pleindre, plourer et gemirEn desconfort.Ne bien n’ay fors Souvenir,Dous Penser et li servir:La me confort,

La seulement me deport,La sont geté tuit mi sortEt la me tir;La vueil je vivre et morirEt la m’acort;La seront tuit mi ressortJusqu’au morir.

En mon cuer a un descort …

and Desire, without any respite,makes my heart, by his effort,fade and turn pale;Beauty comes to assail me;Sweetness puts me to sleep.But Love firmly silences me and makes me suffer.

There is a discord in my heart …

Alas! thus must I languish,lament, weep, and groanin discomfort,nor have I anything good but Memory,Sweet Thoughts, and my service to her:there I find comfort,

there only do I rejoice,there I have cast all my fate,and thence I lead myself;there I wish to live and die,and to this I agree;there shall be all my refugeuntil I die.

There is a discord in my heart …

3 En mon cuer a un descortEn mon cuer a un descortQui si fort le point et mortQue, sans mentir,S’Amours par son doulz plaisirN’i met accortAveuc ma dame, pour mortMe doy tenir.

C’est de mon loyal DesirQui me vuet faire gehirLe mal que portEt comment j’aim et desirMa dame sans repentirEt sans confort.

Mais Paour s’oppose fortEt dit que Desirs a tortDe ce querir.Qu’elle crient Refus oirQui pas ne dortEt Dangiers qui fait a mortL’amant venir.

En mon cuer a un descort …

Si ne say que devenirQuant de ma dame remirLe gentil port,Car Paour me fait fremirEt trambler et tressaillirPar son enort,

There is a discord in my heart,which so strongly pierces and wounds itthat I say without lying,if Love by his sweet pleasuredoes not make an accordwith my lady, I must consider myselfdead.

It comes from my loyal Desire,which wants to make me confessthe wrongs I commit,and how much I love and desiremy lady, without regretand without comfort.

But Fear resists stronglyand says that Desire is wrongto seek this,for she fears hearing Refusal,who never sleeps.and Rejection, which makes a lovercome to his death.

There is a discord in my heart …

Thus I do not know what will become of mewhen I admire my lady’skind bearing,for Fear makes me quiverand tremble and shakeby his suggestion,

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De toulz ces mets est servis a faysonCilz qui ne sceit vivre sans Esperance.

Esperance tient overte la porteAdont chascuns puet avoir guarison.Esperance est de si noble sorteQue cilz ne doit prendre confusionQui l’a o soy, et sanz li ne puet onAvoir loing temps de playsir habundance:Dont prendre assés puet consolacionCilz qui ne sceit vivre sans Esperance.

Pour ce conoy et voy qu’elle m’ennorteA li tenir, et j’ay cause et rayson,Quar ja schay bien que s’elle estoit mortePou y veroit le mien entencion.Dont je vos pris en ma conclusionQue Bel Acueil priés pour m’alagance:En attendant suy [sanz] presoncionCilz qui ne sceit vivre sans Esperance.

6 Io son un pellegrinIo son un pellegrin che vo cercandoLimosina, per Dio merce chiamando.Et vo cantando con la voce bella,Con dolce aspetto et colla treça bionda.Nonnò se non bordone et la scarsella,Et chiamo, et nonnè chi mi risponda.Et quando credo andare alla seconda,Vento contrario mi vien tempestando.Io son un pellegrin che vo cercandoLimosina, per Dio merce chiamando.

From all these dishes is amply servedthe man who cannot live without Hope.

Hope holds open the doorthrough which each may find healing.Hope is of such noble makethat he who has her with himshould never come to harm, and without herone cannot long enjoy pleasure’s abundance:from which he can take some consolation,the man who cannot live without Hope.

Therefore I acknowledge and see that she exhorts meto hold to her, and I have cause and reason,for I know well that if she were deadmy intent would come to little.Thus, in conclusion, I beg youto pray to Fair Welcome for my relief:while waiting I am, without presumption,the man who cannot live without Hope.

I am a pilgrim who goes seekingalms, calling for mercy in God’s name.And I go singing with a lovely voice,with sweet countenance and golden tresses.Nothing have I save staff and satchel,and I call, and there is no one who answers me.And just when I think I’m on a steady course,a contrary wind comes and blows up a storm against me.I am a pilgrim who goes seekingalms, calling for mercy in God’s name.

4 Biauté qui toutes autres pereBiauté qui toutes autres pere,Envers moy diverse et estrange,Doucour fine a mon goust amere,Corps digne de toute loange,Simple vis a cuer d’ayment,Regart pour tuer un amant,Semblant de joie et response d’esmayM’ont a ce mis que pour amer mourray.

Detri d’otri que moult compere,Bel Acuel qui de moy se vange,Amour marrastre et non pas mere,Espoir qui de joie m’estrange,Povre secours, desir ardant,Triste penser, cuer souspirant,Durté, Desdaing, Dangier et Refus qu’ayM’ont a ce mis que pour amer mourray.

Si vueil bien qu’a ma dame appereQu’elle ma joie en doulour changeEt que sa belle face clereMe destruit, tant de meschief san ge,Et que je n’ay revel ne chantN’ainsi com je sueil plus ne chantPour ce qu’Amours, mi oeil et son corps gayM’ont a ce mis que pour amer mourray.

5 En attendant, Esperance conforteEn attendant, Esperance conforteL’omme qui vuolt avoir perfeccion:En attendant se deduc et deporte,En attendant li proumet guerredon,En attendant passe temps et sayson,En attendant met en li sa fiance:

Beauty which is peer of all others,towards me inconstant and distant,exquisite sweetness, bitter to my taste,body worthy of all praise,innocent countenance with heart of steel,a glance to kill a lover,joyful appearance and distressing replyhave brought me to this, that for love I shall die.

Delay in requiting, which costs dearly,Fair Welcome who takes revenge on me,Cruel Love, an unnatural mother,Hope which deprives me of joy,poor help, burning desire,sad thoughts, sighing heart,Harshness, Disdain, Rebuff, and Refusalhave brought me to this, that for love I shall die.

So I wish that it be made known to my ladythat she changes my joy to grief,and that her fair radiant facedestroys me, such misfortune do I feel,and that I have neither pleasure nor song,nor do I sing as I used to,for Love, my eyes, and her genteel personhave brought me to this, that for love I shall die.

While waiting, Hope comfortsthe man who seeks perfection:while waiting, he amuses and entertains himself,while waiting, she promises him reward,while waiting, time and seasons pass,while waiting, he places his trust in her.

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A 14TH-CENTURY SALMAGUNDISalmagundi From the French salmigondis or salmigondin,

first attested in Rabelais’s Third Book of Pantagruel (1546). 1. A savory dish composed of chopped meats, seafoods, eggs, vegetables, and condiments. 2. Mixture, hodgepodge; a disparate or incoherent assemblage of miscellaneous components.

 O n several occasions Blue Heron has been commissioned to record certain pieces of music as part of a larger project. The most substantial and most fruitful of these commissions came from our friend Thomas Forrest Kelly, now professor emeritus at Harvard University, for a CD’s worth of music

to accompany Capturing Music: The Story of Notation, illustrating its examples and going at least some way (as Tom hoped) to turn his fascinating book about sound into a sounding book. The repertoire extended from Gregorian chant to a song composed around 1400, by way of Leonin, Perotin, and Sumer is icumen in, and included half a doz-en 14th-century works. A few years earlier David Rothenberg had asked us to contrib-ute a couple of pieces by the trecento composers Jacopo da Bologna and Francesco Landini to the Oxford Recorded Anthology of Western Music. In recent years Blue Heron has expanded its repertoire of 14th-century music, often working in collaboration with Debra Nagy and Les Délices, and we have recorded a live performance of our co-pro-duction of a concert version of Guillaume de Machaut’s Remede de Fortune. (That CD is scheduled for release in 2021.) In the meantime, it occurred to us that we could put together a pleasing miscellany of music composed between the end of the 13th cen-tury and the last decades of the 14th, a salmagundi of musical ingredients gathered from a storehouse of previously released recordings. No particular theme or concept unites these eight works, although a general tone of complaint—on grounds amorous, political, pecuniary, or musical—turns out to predominate; we hope that the dish may prove savory nonetheless.

7 Osellecto selvaggioOsellecto selvaggio per stagioneDolci versetti canta con bel modo,Tale che grida forte chi non lodo.

Per gridar forte non si canta beneMa con soav’e dolce melodiaSi fa bel canto e ci vuol maestria.

Pochi l’hanno e tutti si fan maestri,Fan ballate, madriali et motetti,Tutti enfioran Filipi e Marchetti.

Sì si è piena la terra di magistroliChe loco più non trovano discepoli.

8 Musica son / Già furon / Ciascun vuoleMusica son che mi dolgo piangendoVeder gli effecti mie dolce perfectiLasciar per frottol i vagh’intellecti.Perche ingnorança e viçi’ogn’uom costuma,Lasciasi ’l buon e pigliasi la schiuma.

Già furon le dolceçe mie pregiateDa chavalier, baroni et gran singnori,Or sono’n bastarditi e genti cori.Ma io musica sol non mi lamentoCh’ancor l’altre virtù lasciare sento.

Ciascun vuole narrar musical noteEt compor madrial, caccie, ballate,Tenend’ognum le sue autenticate.Chi vuol d’una virtù venire in lodaConviengli prima giugner alla proda.

A wild little bird during the seasonsings sweet little verses in a beautiful style,whereas those I do not praise shout loudly.

Loud shouting does not make for good singing,but with smooth and sweet melodyone produces good singing, and this requires skill.

Few have it, yet all make themselves out to be masters:they compose ballatas, madrigals and motets,all puff themselves up as Philippes and Marchettos.*

Thus the land is so full of little mastersthat there is no room left for disciples.

* i.e. Philippe de Vitry and Marchetto of Padua

Music am I, who, weeping, grieveto see my sweet, perfect workingsabandoned in favor of country songs by amorous minds.Because ignorance is a vice common to all men,the good is cast aside and froth seized upon.

Heretofore were my sweet effects esteemedby knights, barons, and great lords;now they are bastardized and sung by crowds.But I, Music, do not lament alone,because I see that the other virtues are also abandoned.

Everyone wants to dictate musical notesand compose madrigals, caccias, and ballatas,each sticking to his own rules.He who wishes to be praised for a virtueought first to step up into the prow.

Translations by Scott Metcalfe, Thomas Forrest Kelly, and Lawrence Rosenwald.

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times as fast as the other texted voice, the motetus; the motetus in turn sings roughly three times as fast as the tenor, whose melody is a fragment carved from a plainchant. The effect is exhilaratingly virtuosic and quasi-improvisational. Petrus surely did not want the triplum singer to divide his breve into seven mechanically equal parts, but rather expected him to shape his seven syllables as freely and understandably as pos-sible. Obviously there is an upper limit to the speed at which the piece can go, and the tenor will need an excellent pair of lungs.

Garrit gallus/In nova fert animus, attributed to Philippe de Vitry, is one of a large num-ber of musical works interpolated into the Roman de Fauvel, a satirical poem about a politically ambitious horse whose name is a byword for vice (F for Flattery, A for Avarice, U/V for Villainy, V for Varieté or inconstancy, E for Envy, L for Lacheté or cowardice). The poem by Gervès de Bus, a notary of the French royal chancery, survives in a number of manuscripts; one, probably from 1317–18, contains extensive interpolations of addition-al poetry and prose by another writer as well as pictures and 169 items of music. Garrit gallus/In nova fert may have been composed especially for this version of Fauvel. In its text, a rooster (presumably Vitry, who was nicknamed Gallus by his friend Petrarch in a later work; the word means both rooster and a native of Gaul, a Frenchman) leads a cho-rus of lamenting roosters; the fox is Enguerran de Marigny, a notorious royal chancellor who wielded fearsome power at the court of King Philippe IV the Fair, here personified as a blind lion. The fox, described as an avatar of the dragon slain by the archangel Michael, rules over the lion and terrorizes the other animals. Relating the transforma-tion of dragon into fox, Vitry’s motetus quotes the first line of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas.” But “woe to the dragon”: shortly after Philippe died on November 29, 1314, Enguerran, having lost his blind royal protector, fell from power. He was indicted for financial crimes and necromancy, tried, and executed.

French motets around 1300The technology of musical notation in Europe took a series of giant leaps forward over the course of the long century between around 1180 and 1320, as musicians worked out a system for specifying the duration of musical notes. Four milestones mark the course of this progression: the invention of rhythmic notation in the years before 1200 at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, adapting the non-measured neumes of plainchant to new uses (as seen in the works of Leoninus and Perotinus); the development of new forms of notes, each with a specific duration, described by Franco of Cologne in his Ars cantus mensurabilis (Art of measured song) sometime in the middle of the 13th cen-tury; the expansion of the range of rhythmic values at the shorter end of the spectrum associated with Petrus de Cruce, towards the end of the 13th century; and, in the early 1300s, the codification of a precise system of rhythmic relationships known as the Four Prolations, attributed to Philippe de Vitry.1 Our first two selections are most likely by the composers whose names have been inscribed by historians of music on the latter two milestones.

Petrus de Cruce, a cleric and musician from Amiens who studied in Paris, was praised by the contemporary theorist Jacobus of Liège as a “worthy practical musician, who com-posed so many beautiful and good pieces of mensural polyphony and followed Franco’s precepts.” While in Franco’s system a breve (or short note) could be divided into two or three semibreves (shorter notes), Petrus, according to Jacobus, “sometimes put more than three semibreves for a perfect breve. At first he began to put four semibreves … Thereafter he went further and put for one perfect breve now five semibreves, now six, and now seven …” As an example Jacobus cited two motets found in the famous late 13th-century Montpellier Codex, including Aucun ont trouvé chant/Lonc tans me sui tenu/Annuntiantes. In this piece, the top voice or triplum does indeed fit two, three, five, six, and even seven semibreves (for the seven syllables of “li ai fait houmage pour”) into the space of one breve. In order to cram all its words in, the triplum moves about three

1 For a detailed and readable account of the development of Western musical notation, including discussions of the music in tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8, see Thomas Forrest Kelly’s Capturing Music: The Story of Notation.

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While the 14th-century virelai, however sophisticated, was in Machaut’s hands first and foremost the handmaiden of dance, its text an entrancing confection of metric and sonic play, the ballade was a vehicle for the expression of the most complex ideas and sentiments, and it received appropriately elaborate musical treatment. Machaut com-posed forty-one polyphonic ballades, as well as one for just one voice. He wrote Biauté qui toutes autres pere for two, and so it is transmitted in the complete-works manu-scripts produced during Machaut’s lifetime. In a copy made for the duke of Berry fifteen or so years after Machaut’s death, a third part has been added, probably by someone other than Machaut. The two-voice original is an absolutely perfect piece of music, its extraordinary expressive power achieved with incredible economy of means. The three-voice version recorded here is quite captivatingly beautiful, too, but the new line does nothing to improve the piece; on the contrary, it is impossible not to feel that the original is weakened by the addition. The comparison is most instructive, as you will be able to hear for yourself when you can listen to the two-voice version we recorded for our forthcoming CD of the Remede de Fortune. In the meantime, I trust that this col-laboration between Machaut and a later composer, however inadvertent on Machaut’s part, may not be unpleasing.

Machaut is the dominant figure of the 14th century in both poetry and music, and lat-er poets and composers could not but engage with his work. In some cases the lines of influence or emulation are direct. In Machaut’s Remede de Fortune, the remedy for Fortune is Hope, Esperance, who counsels the story‘s woebegone lover on how to with-stand the blows of Fortune, endure the pains of love, and find happiness. She sings him a song: “En amer a douce vie / Et jolie, / Qui bien la scet maintenir” (“To be in love is a sweet life / and a happy one / for him who knows how to live it”). Esperance turns up again in an anonymous rondeau set to music sometime in the second half of the 14th century; the poem refers directly to En amer a douce vie: “Esperance, qui en mon cuer embat, / Sentir me fait d’amer la doulce vie” (Hope, which enters into my heart, makes me feel the sweet life of loving”). The rondeau Esperance is then referenced—musi-cally, textually, or both—in a series of three works: En attendant d’amer la douce vie by Johannes Galiot, En atendant souffrir m’estuet by Philipoctus de Caserta, and En

Machaut & the Ars subtiliorAprez vint Philippe de Vitry, qui trouva la maniere des motés, et des balades, et des lais, et des simples rondeaux, et en la musique trouva les .iiij. prolacions, et les notes rouges, et la noveleté des proporcions.Apres vint maistre Guillaume de Machault, le grant retthorique de nouvelle forme, qui com-mencha toutes tailles nouvelles, et les parfais lays d’amours.

Then came Philippe de Vitry, who invented the manner of motets, ballades, lays, and simple rondeaus, and in music invented the four prolations, and red notes, and the novelty of proportions.Then came master Guillaume de Machault, the great rhetorician of the new school, who originated all manner of new forms, and perfect amorous lays.

from Les regles de la Seconde Rettorique, early 15th century

Born a few years after Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut employed the new system of the four prolations to create a singular corpus of musical settings of poems he himself wrote, perfecting the new lyric forms of ballade, virelai, and rondeau and establishing their predominance for poetic and musical composition for the next century and a half. Machaut left us nearly three dozen virelais set to music, which he says should prop-erly be called “chansons baladées” or “danced songs.” In his narrative poem Remede de Fortune he describes how one is performed in a park by a solo singer without any accompaniment, while a great company of ladies, knights, maidens, and other courtly folk dance gaily. Twenty-five of Machaut’s virelais are monophonic; seven are for two voices and one is for three. One virelai, Mors sui, is found as a two-voice composition in all of its manuscript sources except the earliest, where its cantus alone is entered as a monophonic dance song. In The Oxford History of Western Music, Richard Taruskin suggested that En mon cuer a un descort might have been originally composed as a monophonic dance song,2 and so when we recorded it for the anthology that would accompany the student version of the book, we were asked to perform the opening refrain and first stanza thus; a fiddle joins on the tenor part at the first repeat of the refrain. (Machaut doesn’t mention how he envisioned the tenor of a two-part virelai being realised.)

2 He mistakenly says that it was a one-voice song in its earliest source, which is true of Mors sui but not of En mon cuer.

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ballade, although both forms (like the virelai or chanson baladée) started out as dance songs, as their names suggest. In Io son un pellegrin a two-line ripresa (“Io son …”) in-troduces a pair of two-line piedi (“Et vo cantando…,” “Nonnò …”), followed by a two-line volta with the rhyme scheme and music of the ripresa (“Et quando credo …”); a repeat of the ripresa brings the piece to a conclusion. The song is delightfully melismatic, spin-ning out ornamented melody at the beginning and end of each section, yet the words are easily comprehensible, since between melismas the text is declaimed syllabically and exactly aligned in the two voices. The speaker complains that no-one answers his call for alms, despite his being a pretty blonde with a nice voice.

Jacopo da Bologna set the madrigal Osellecto selvaggio twice, once for two voices (the version recorded here) and again as a three-part caccia, in which two canonic voices chase each other above a slowly-moving tenor. The trecento madrigal (unlike the 16th-century musical madrigal) is a poetic form, of which Osellecto selvaggio is a typical example: three three-line strophes called terzetti, each in 11-syllable lines with a stressed tenth syllable and rhymed abb (or cdd or eff), are followed by a two-line ri-tornello in endecasillabo sdrucciolo (in which the stressed tenth syllable is followed by two unstressed), rhymed gg. Jacopo underlines the arrival of the ritornello with an ar-resting harmonic shift. The text sounds a note heard rather often in later 14th-century musical settings: the aggrieved composer deplores the proliferation of self-styled mas-ters who vainly imagine themselves musicians with the skills of a Philippe de Vitry—or, indeed, the maker of the piece at hand, whose shining accomplishments (on display in the music being sung) self-evidently cast those of his inferiors into the shade.

The theme recurs in Francesco Landini’s triple madrigal, Musica son/Già furon/Ciascun vuole. Music herself speaks in a sequence of three one-strophe madrigals (abb terzetto plus cc ritornello), each assigned to a different part. As the three texts are declaimed simultaneously, it will be a skilled listener indeed who can fully comprehend the sweet, perfect workings of Landini’s most masterful counterpoint.

We are most grateful to Tom Kelly and David Rothenberg for inviting us to record these pieces in the first place, and we extend our thanks to W. W. Norton and Oxford University Press for granting us permission to reissue the recordings in this collection. —Scott Metcalfe

attendant, Esperance conforte by Jacob Senleches. The latter is recorded here. When Senleches reaches the last word of the ballade’s refrain (the last line of each stanza, “Cilz qui ne sceit vivre sans Esperance”), he sets the word “Esperance” to the opening melody of the anonymous Esperance.

The three “En attendant” songs appear in two important sources of French secular music of the late fourteenth century: the famous Chantilly codex and the manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, α.M.5.24. What occasioned their composition is not known. The two manuscripts seem to have been copied by Italian scribes around the second decade of the fifteenth century, which does not offer much of a clue to the origins of a group of French songs that were likely composed in the 1380s. It is prob-ably not coincidental that Louis de Bourbon, nephew of King Jean II of France, took “Esperance” as his motto after he was released from English captivity in the mid-1360s and that the French royal family adopted it by the 1380s, nor that “Souffrir m’estuet” (“I must suffer”) was the motto of Bernabò Visconti of Milan. Connections between the Bourbon-Valois nobility of France and the Visconti may have prompted Philipoctus to link the two mottos in the ballade En atendant souffrir m’estuet and inspired the cre-ation of the “En attendant” songs; we might envision some sort of half collaborative, half competitive effort commissioned by noble patrons. But this is all speculation by latter-day musicologists.

The “En attendant” songs are made in a rhythmically and harmonically complex style that was enabled by refinements in musical notation developed in the latter part of the fourteenth century. The best music in this style, later dubbed the Ars subtilior (the more subtle art), is jazzy, at once hard to grasp and intoxicating; its complicated rhythms are precisely specified but the effect is loose and improvisatory. And Senleches was one of the best, as his En attendant, Esperance conforte bears ample witness.

Three cranky Italian songsWe season our French salmigondin with a trio of piquant Italian songs. The first is an anonymous ballata, Io son un pellegrin. The Italian ballata is not the same as a French

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was named to the Bestenliste of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Blue Heron’s recordings also include a CD of plainchant and polyphony that accompa-nies Thomas Forrest Kelly’s book Capturing Music: The Story of Notation, the live recording Christmas in Medieval England, and a compilation of medieval songs en-titled A 14th-Century Salmagundi.

SCOTT METCALFE is widely recognized as one of North America’s lead-ing specialists in music from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries and be-yond. Musical and artistic director of Blue Heron since its founding in 1999, he was music director of New York City’s Green Mountain Project from 2010-19, and he has been guest director of TENET (New York), the Handel & Haydn Society (Boston), Emmanuel Music (Boston), The Tudor Choir and Seattle Baroque, Pacific Baroque Orchestra (Vancouver, BC), Quire Cleveland, and the Dryden Ensemble (Princeton, NJ), in music ranging from Machaut to Bach and Handel. Metcalfe also enjoys a career as a baroque violinist, playing with Les Délices (dir. Debra Nagy), L’Harmonie des Saisons (dir. Eric Milnes), and other ensembles. He has taught at Boston University and Harvard University and served as director of the baroque orches-tra at Oberlin Conservatory, and in 2019-20 he was a visiting member of the faculty of Music History at the New England Conservatory, where he continues to teach classes.

Metcalfe received received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University (1985), where he majored in biology, and a master’s degree in historical performance practice from Harvard (2005). Some of his research on the performance practice of English vocal music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will be published as two chapters in Music, politics, and religion in early seventeenth-century Cambridge: the Peterhouse partbooks in context (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, forth-coming). He has also edited a motet by Francisco de Peñalosa for Antico Edition (2017) and the twelve unique songs in the newly-discovered Leuven chansonnier for the Alamire Foundation (Belgium). A new edition of the songs of Gilles Binchois (c. 1400–1460) is in preparation.

BLUE HERON has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as “one of the Boston music community’s indispensables” and hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for its “expressive intensity.” The ensemble ranges over a wide repertoire from plainchant to new music, with particular specialities in 15th-century Franco-Flemish polyphony and early 16th-century English sacred music, and is committed to vivid live performance in-formed by the study of original source materials and historical performance practices.

Founded in 1999, Blue Heron presents a concert series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival; in New York City at Music Before 1800, The Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum of Art), and the 92nd Street Y; at the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.; at the Berkeley Early Music Festival; at Yale University; in Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Providence, St. Louis, San Luis Obispo, Seattle, and Vancouver; and in Cambridge and London, England. Blue Heron has been in residence at the Center for Early Music Studies at Boston University and at Boston College, and has enjoyed collaborations with A Far Cry, Dark Horse Consort, Les Délices, Parthenia, Piffaro, and Ensemble Plus Ultra.

Blue Heron’s first CD, featuring music by Guillaume Du Fay, was released in 2007. Between 2010 and 2017 the ensemble issued a 5-CD series of Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, including many world premiere recordings of works copied c. 1540 for Canterbury Cathedral and restored by Nick Sandon; the fifth CD was awarded the 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Award for Early Music and the five discs are now available as a set entitled The Lost Music of Canterbury. In 2015 Professor Jessie Ann Owens and Blue Heron won the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society to support the world premiere recording of Cipriano de Rore’s I madrigali a cinque voci, released in 2019. In 2015 Blue Heron also embarked on Ockeghem@600, a multi-season project to perform the complete works of Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497), which will wind up around 2021 in time to commemorate the composer’s circa-600th birth-day. A parallel project to record all of Ockeghem’s songs and motets bore its first fruits in 2019 with the release of Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume I, which

GUILLAUME DU FAY

MOTETS HYMNS

CHANSONSSANCTUS PAPALE

I MADRIGALI A CINQUE VOCI

CIPRIANO DE RORE2-CD SET

World Premiere Recording

A 14TH-CENTURY SALMAGUNDI MACHAUT, SENLECHES, LANDINI ET AL.

CHRISTMAS IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

JOHANNES OCKEGHEM

COMPLETE SONGS VOL. 1

JOHANNES OCKEGHEMCOMPLETE SONGSVOL. 2(2022)

MUSIC FROM THE PETERHOUSE PARTBOOKS Canterbury Cathedral, c. 1540

VOL. 1 VOL. 2

VOL. 3 VOL. 4

VOL. 5 THE LOST MUSIC OF CANTERBURY

5-CD SET

E A R LY M U S I C

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Blue Heron Recordings